Brian Freemantle - Charlie M

‘I think we should move,’ he said. ‘We can always stop en route if we make good time, but I don’t want to be late,’

Both Directors nodded agreement. It was going to be a diarrhoetic four hours for them, thought Charlie, waiting alone in the lofty room with only sporadic radio messages to tell them what was happening.

Ruttgers stopped them at the door.

‘Good luck,’ he said.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Braley.

‘And you, Charlie,’ pressed the American, smiling at his acceptance of the other man’s affectation.

Charlie nodded, without replying, leading the way from the room.

Unchallenged, Charlie took the driver’s seat and began moving the car along the now familiar route towards the Marien Bridge. Within fifteen minutes he had picked up the road to Langenzerdorf and had begun to relax. The traffic was comparatively light and it was a warm, dry evening with clouds, which would reduce the light during the cross-over. Perfect, thought Charlie.

As they passed each monitoring point, Braley depressed the code key on the radio, signalling their progress. Ruttgers and Cuthbertson would be in the control room now, guessed Charlie, charting their route on the map that had been laid out there.

‘There’s no reason why you should like them,’ said the American, after a while. ‘But equally there’s no reason why you should be so bloody rude.’

‘They’re fools,’ judged Charlie.

‘That’s ridiculous and you know it,’ rejected Braley. ‘Fools can’t hold down the positions they do.’

Charlie shrugged, unwilling to pursue any argument. As they approached the border, Braley’s breathing became more difficult, he noticed. When they got on the outskirts of Ernstbrunn, their radio clattered briefly as the units in Stockerau and Wolkersdorf identified themselves.

‘It’s working well,’ said Braley, nervously.

‘Traps always do until they close around you,’ said Charlie, unhelpfully.

There was hardly any traffic on the road and they cleared Ernstbrunn in minutes. At the junction with the road to Mistelbach, Charlie slowed and then halted, knowing he was well ahead of time.

‘It’s a terrible road for a chase,’ he assessed, professionally.

Braley nodded agreement.

‘I’ve been thinking that for miles,’ replied the American, miserably. ‘Let’s hope to Christ we can hold anything sufficiently long to make the decoy work.’

Charlie looked sideways at him, questioningly.

‘Just how hard do you think the Russians and the Czechs would go to get Kalenin back?’ he demanded, rhetorically. ‘There’s hardly a man in the Soviet Union more important to them. If they come, they’ll cross that border like a steamroller, flattening everything in their path.’

Braley slumped in his seat.

‘Let’s get going,’ he avoided. ‘I don’t want to be late.’

They reached the back-up cars, parked two miles from the border, at 9 p.m. Braley and Charlie stopped and crossed to the lead car, where Braley stared in momentary amazement at Cox sitting in the front seat.

‘Jim,’ he exclaimed. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Part of the team,’ said the athlete, happily. ‘Recalled from Moscow a week ago. I’m handling the decoy car. Think it’ll work?’

‘We hope so,’ replied Braley. He wondered what real diversion had been planned to involve Cox: certainly there would be no question of his getting captured. Poor bastard: still, he wasn’t a very good operative.

Marshall, the section leader of the resistance group, was a crew-cut, taut man of sharp, abrupt movements. He sat alongside Cox, flexing and shrugging his shoulders, like a boxer Umbering up before a bout. He’s hoping there will be a chase, so he can involve himself in a fight, assessed Charlie.

‘No last-minute snags?’ demanded the Briton.

Marshall grinned sideways at the question, as if the idea were unthinkable.

‘No last-minute snags,’ he echoed. He looked at the heavy Rolex watch that had been part of the elite snobbism of the Green Berets in Vietnam.

‘The team are setting off in fifteen minutes to take out the border post,’ he reported.

‘No one is to be killed,’ said Charlie, immediately. Marshall worried him, he decided. The marine was the sort of man who enjoyed killing.

‘My men know what to do,’ snapped the American, gazing at the unkempt Briton as if he’d trodden in dog droppings.

‘They’d better,’ reminded Charlie, unperturbed. ‘The object is to avoid trouble, not cause it.’

Marshall turned to look at him fully, his face inches away from Charlie’s.

‘You trying to tell me how to do it?’ he demanded.

He would keep his voice very low because he would have read in books that it was how men spoke in such circumstances, thought Charlie. The marine’s breath smelt of mint and he wore a heavy cologne, Charlie detected.

‘No,’ he said, not moving his head away. ‘But if it becomes necessary, I shall. And I’ll pull rank, gun or whatever other crap is necessary to ensure that my instructions are followed. The war in Asia, commander, is over. And your lot made a balls of it.’

The man’s control was remarkable and Charlie was glad of it. There would have been no way he could have physically confronted him, Charlie knew.

The departure of the assault group broke the tension between them. Their faces were cork-blackened and they moved without sound. Complete experts, thought Charlie. And killers.

‘I’ll be in the lead car, fifty yards from the border,’ reported Cox, speaking to Braley.

The fat American nodded.

‘If there’s no chase, I shan’t bother to stop. I’ll leave you to follow automatically,’ Charlie told the marine commander.

Marshall nodded, tightly.

Charlie turned as Braley nudged him. The man was offering the luminous dial of his wristwatch to him.

‘Time to go.’

His breathing was very bad now, Charlie realised.

The Briton let himself quietly out of the car, returned to the Mercedes and sat for several seconds, hands gripping the wheel.

‘You all right?’ asked Braley, worried.

Charlie released a long sigh, then started the car.

‘Yes,’he said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘That was unnecessary, back there,’ said Braley, nodding over his shoulder to the car where Marshall sat.

‘I know,’ conceded Charlie, embarrassed now.

‘Then why do it?’

Charlie shrugged in the darkness.

‘You’ve got to buck everyone, haven’t you, Charlie?’

The Briton said nothing. It had been bloody stupid.

‘You shouldn’t do it, Charlie. There’s no need for you to keep proving yourself.’

‘Forget it,’ said Charlie, irritated.

Braley stopped talking, looking sadly at the Englishman, and they made the two-mile drive enclosed in their separate fears. The road bent immediately before the border and Charlie stopped just short, so that the car was hidden. Braley’s protest in Prague had been right, thought Charlie. Despite the clouds, it was hardly dark.

‘Let’s check on foot,’ he suggested.

They got carefully from the car, easing the doors open so there was no sound. Charlie led, keeping against the bank where the shadows were deepest. He’d moved like this with Snare he recalled, all those months ago in Berlin. And there’d been a trap for him at the border. And now Snare was mad.

The Austrian border post was completely quiet. Through the window of the tiny office, they could see one of Marshall’s assault group. The man sat next to a telephone that kept liaison between the stations. He appeared relaxed and very comfortable.

‘Do you think they’ll have killed the guards?’ asked Charlie.

‘Yes,’ said Braley, immediately. As if it were justification, he offered: ‘It’s the only way they’re trained.’